Find Us Online:

I recently grabbed dinner with an educator interested in pursuing a PhD. Before talking about preparing for graduate programs, we shared stories about our experiences teaching. She told one story about social media, however, that bothered me. The middle school where she first taught banned all forms of social media by students on school property. […]

I. So this happens. I get an email from a respected colleague in Rossier, “We’re in the Top 10!” I already know what top 10 list we’re on, and it ain’t good. USC is one of the most expensive schools for graduate school debt in the US. I already knew this because I have been […]

There’s been a lot of talk, criticism, and collective outrage about the decision to weaken tenure and shared governance at University of Wisconsin at Madison. The anger is well founded. Scholars from institutions across the nation and across disciplines expressed their opinions and often harsh criticism of the decision. The widespread response is not a […]

Some years ago I was speaking with a young friend whose English was his second language. We were on the phone and I mentioned that it was “raining cats and dogs.” He laughed and said, “I’m not sure I understand you.” One of my nieces has married a fellow from Nepal and when I first […]

“I used to have three k but my account got deleted,” one of my high school students said to her friend about Instagram. Being the nosy teacher that I was, I asked, “You had three k what?” “Three k followers Mr. T. Over three thousand? Catch up Mr. T., I thought you was hip.” The […]

Topics are always more complex than they seem. As scholars we learn about the nuances and context-specific issues of various issues. To better understand issues, we often employ theoretical frameworks. Theoretical frameworks are like the lenses we use to see and analyze data. Scholars may use different frameworks to look at the same phenomena and […]

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me… When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me,” Ralph Ellison wrote in his Invisible Man. I am a Black man and in some spaces, because of this identity, I battle the […]

One of the better novels I have read in the last several months is Dave Eggers’ The Circle. Eggers came onto the stage with a great book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which was a memoir. This guy is a dynamo – novels, non-profits, community activist, and thinker. The Circle is a superb good […]

The news has been full of lamentable examples of bigotry and discrimination. The governor of Indiana signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, legislation that permits businesses to discriminate on the basis of religion—a restaurant, for instance, could refuse service to a gay couple. The politician posed the law as a moral argument; and yet, any […]

I want to talk about two things, skills and structures. Let’s start with some numbers about social media and computer science. According to the most recent Pew Research Report, 83% of African American teens play video games, which is more than any other group. Forty five percent of Black teens reported using twitter. Sixty-four percent […]